Understanding Classes

[Ace Blackwell]

All,

I have a programming question about classes. I’m reading and re-reading about them. I understand the general idea, not claiming to know all there is to know, hence this question.

I’m not seeing the vast benefit to the member functions. Unless they do some level of automated activities, such as a constructor , what is the difference between member functions and normal functions isolated to their own file? It appears that you still have to call the function separate to get them to do anything, and if you include any files with your program to allow you to use the member functions, then they aren’t any more transparent than any other function.

I’m not trying to argue against member function or question their usefulness. But without seeing any unique benefit I feel that I’m just not understanding the true concept of them. Just trying to get a little education. LOL

Ace

[MikeyBoy]

There's a lot that could be written about this, but you're best off doing Google searches for Encapsulation and Data Abstraction. In fact, I think Wikipedia has some pages on those subjects.

These things are absolutely fundamental to Object Oriented Programming, and any introductory text on the topic should explain it.